


Coming Home to Roost

by Auriana Valoria (AuriV1)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Chickens, Comedy, Funny, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 20:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12283587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuriV1/pseuds/Auriana%20Valoria
Summary: Inquisitor Trevelyan must deal with a chicken problem at Skyhold.





	Coming Home to Roost

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in answer to a prompt on deviantArt and made entirely for laughs. Do enjoy! :)

“Inquisitor! Inquisitor, you have to help me!”

The Herald’s black quill paused its scratching as she heard the desperate cries of Cook echoing up the stairwell to her chambers. Brow furrowing in concern, Verana-Kathryn Trevelyan carefully set the half-filled parchment, still wet with ink, atop the mountain of reports from her advisors at her elbow. No sooner than she had done so, Cook herself burst into her room, puffing up the last bit of stairs with a protesting guard close on the old woman’s heels.

The young guardsman shook his head apologetically at Verana and threw his hands in the air, “I’m _very_ sorry, my lady, I tried to tell her you were busy…”

“Lady Inquisitor, I need your help!” Cook wheezed, clutching at her chest as she caught her breath.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Verana stood and pushed back her chair in one fluid move, dismissing the guard with a wave as she moved around the desk towards Cook.

“Oh…oh Inquisitor,” Cook pleaded, “It’s my prize laying hen, Penny! She’s flown the coop! Dancin’ all over the roofs and I can’t get her back down! Maker, if she gets out of the castle and the wolves scent her…” Cook took Verana’s hands in her own, “Please, Lady Inquisitor, I beg you, help me get her back! I saved her from Haven, kept her warm all the way to Skyhold. I can’t lose her after all we’ve been through! Sentimentality notwithstandin’, I’ll be short on eggs for the keep until we can get a proper replacement here…”

Verana sighed. She really should be reading her reports, writing out responses, issuing orders, and recovering from her recent outing in the Hinterlands. She shouldn’t be spending her valuable time chasing after chickens on the loose in Skyhold.

But, what did she decide to do?

“Don’t you worry, Cook,” Verana replied kindly, giving the old woman a gentle smile and patting her hands reassuringly. “I’ll get Penny back to you, I promise.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“ _Pennyyyyyy_! Here PennyPennyPennyPenny!”

Dorian’s calls fell on deaf ears, the fat speckled hen atop the kitchen roof completely ignoring any and all verbal encouragement from the courtyard below.

Sighing heavily, the Tevinter altus glanced sideways at Verana and let his hands fall against his legs resignedly, “Well that doesn’t work.”

“The rest of us figured that when the Cook couldn’t get her down the same way,” Vivienne quipped, hand on her hip as she sneered at her fellow mage.

“Well, you can’t fault me for trying, can you?” Dorian replied with a mischievous wink. “I mean, what hen in Thedas could resist this charming voice, hmm?”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Cassandra put her head in her hand, rubbing her temples with her thumb and forefinger.

“Apparently this one can,” Verana smirked.

“I doubt magic would be a good way of solving this problem,” Solas observed, hands behind his back as he watched the hen. “Best to leave it to more conventional methods.”

“And by that, he means chasing it down with our bare hands,” Varric elaborated flatly.

“There’ll be no chasing her as long as she’s all the way up there,” Blackwall noted, arms crossed. “And even if we _could_ get up there, she’d be gone somewhere else as soon as someone set foot on the roof anyway.”

“This is going to be-” Iron Bull began, but was abruptly cut off as Sera suddenly shoved forward with her bow in hand.

“Oh, just get it _done_ already!” the elf knocked and aimed.

“Sera! _No_!”

But it was too late. The arrow had already flown…

…and it landed with a hollow _thud_ just below where Penny sat. The noise startled the hen, causing her to lurch forward, squawking and flapping her wings for momentum. Her short flight took her over the small gap between the roof and the wall to the battlements, where a patrolling guard frightened her even more. Off Penny ran, still fussing and leaving a trail of feathers floating behind her as she weaved and dodged watchmen and patrols, all of whom observed the spectacle with first surprised and then bemused expressions on their faces.

From their place in the courtyard, the Inquisitor and her Inner Circle watched almost entranced as the hen raced along the wall at breakneck speed, headed straight for Cullen’s watchtower. Just as she seemed to slow and calm, however, the Commander himself opened his office door with a large sheaf of papers in hand. Up Penny went, squawking and flapping, causing him to drop the parchment in surprise, some of the thin leaves immediately caught by the wind and sent sailing over the walls. Cursing and spitting feathers from his lips, he spun around just in time to see Penny dart into his office.

Verana clamped a hand over her mouth as she began to laugh aloud, the scene slowly but surely becoming more and more absurd. There was the distant sound of something breaking in the office before the opposite door opened and the dwarven courier ran out, flailing her arms to keep the increasingly-distressed Penny off of her. This startled the gaggle of soldiers standing atop the gatehouse, who attempted to shoo the hen away. Penny then jumped up between the crenellations and began flapping madly as she descended rather awkwardly to the ground.

“ _There!_ ”

In an instant, Penny suddenly had Blackwall, Iron Bull, and Dorian all closing in on her as the others observed from a distance.

“This is not going to end well,” Solas remarked, barely-hidden mirth in his tone.

“Yes, I’m fairly certain that’s _not_ how you approach distressed chickens,” Vivienne replied, herself unamused.

The hen squawked again as the three men approached, skirting between Blackwall’s legs just as he caught up to her. Bull dove for her and missed, landing full-force in a mud puddle. Dorian switched directions at the last second in an attempt to herd the scampering chicken but slipped on a muddy cobble, and he too, fell to the ground like a stone.

“She’s heading for the stables!”

“Don’t let her go back towards the gatehouse!”

Varric and Cassandra, both growing tired of the mad scenario, maneuvered behind the fleeing hen and forced her to run in the direction of the very coop she had managed to get out of early that morning. Finally, after plenty of zigging and zagging between stable hands and merchants, Cassandra succeeded in shooing Penny into the coop and latching the gate behind her before the chicken could find any more convenient escape routes.

There was a full round of applause from the walls where a whole group of soldiers watched the courtyard below, cheering, whistling, and laughing before Cullen ordered them back to their posts.

It was then that the Inner Circle cast a baleful glare at Sera, who merely laughed off their irritated looks and shrugged nonchalantly, “Well it worked, dinnit?”

Verana sighed as she watched Cook talking to the now-caged Penny and singing the Inquisition’s praises all the while.

“Yes, Sera. Yes, it did.”


End file.
